Antora Energy is Electrifying Industrial Manufacturing with Thermal Energy Storage

Zero-carbon industrial heat and power.

“It’s one thing to say when it’s really sunny in California, I can use those electrons to power industry. But what about in the middle of the night? What about if there’s a four-day storm where there’s no sun or no wind, you know, it’s those circumstances where manufacturing sectors still needs reliable energy, but wind and solar can’t do it alone. So that’s why you fundamentally need storage. Antora solves this problem by eliminating the variability of wind and solar. So the way that works is you take that solar electricity or that wind electricity when it’s available on that sunny or windy day and you use it to resistively heat blocks of carbon.” – Justin Briggs, Co-Founder, Antora Energy

Within this mini documentary series we will be featuring three of our awardees who are changing the way we think about grid-scale storage. First up is Antora Energy who’s innovative thermal energy storage soaks up excess solar and wind electricity and uses it to heat blocks of carbon so they glow like inside a toaster. This thermal energy is then delivered to customers as electricity or industrial process heat up to 1500°C, on demand.

Antora stores energy by heating carbon blocks to extremely high temperatures. The super-heated blocks glow so brightly that a beam of that light can produce electricity on demand or directly heat energy-intensive industrial processes. Antora fits this mechanism inside a modular box about the size of a shipping container. Right now Antora is focused on decarbonizing and electrifying the industrial manufacturing sector which currently is responsible for 30% of all greenhouse gas emissions in the in the US.

Antora has received the CalSEED Concept and Prototype award and has gone on to secure $50 million from Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Lowercarbon Capital and other established climatetech investors. Watch the mini doc to understand more about their innovation.